For 3 nights through the 2025 baseball season, the Arkansas Vacationers, the Seattle Mariners’ Double-A affiliate, will take the sector underneath a brand new identify: The Little Rock 9. Whereas the identify may sound like a pure match for a baseball workforce, its significance reaches far past the sport—it’s a tribute to one of the pivotal moments in Civil Rights historical past.
From August 21-23, the Vacationers will commemorate the Little Rock 9, the group of Black highschool college students who courageously desegregated Little Rock Central Excessive Faculty in 1957. Their historic stand towards racial segregation was met with fierce resistance from state leaders, who deployed the Arkansas Nationwide Guard to dam their entry. The state of affairs grew to become so unstable that President Dwight D. Eisenhower needed to ship federal troops to escort them into the college safely. Regardless of enduring relentless racism and intimidation, the Little Rock 9 stood agency, paving the best way for integration in public colleges throughout the nation.
The Vacationers’ Little Rock 9 id is a part of Minor League Baseball’s “The 9” initiative, which promotes Black baseball historical past and tradition—fittingly named after Jackie Robinson’s No. 9 jersey from his lone Minor League season in 1946.
“It felt like a tremendous alternative to honor the Little Rock 9,” mentioned Vacationers common supervisor Sophie Ozier. “From the identify of this system to 9 gamers on a baseball discipline, there have been so many alternative connections.”
Discovering members of the Little Rock 9 to collaborate on this mission wasn’t simple, as solely seven of the unique 9 are nonetheless residing, now of their 80s. Finally, the workforce related with Carlotta Partitions LaNier, who was simply 14 years outdated when she enrolled at Central Excessive and later graduated in 1960—the identical 12 months her household’s dwelling was bombed by segregationist terrorists.
“After I known as [Walls] to inform her about this, she was so pumped and excited, telling me that she was an enormous baseball fan rising up,” Ozier shared. “Considered one of them [Thelma Mothershed-Wair] handed final 12 months, and a pair dwell in a foreign country. Since they’re older, we don’t need them to journey in the event that they’re not snug with it.”
The Vacationers selected to unveil their Little Rock 9 tribute on February 17, coinciding with Daisy Bates Day in Arkansas. Bates, a journalist, activist, and president of the NAACP’s Arkansas chapter, performed a vital position in mentoring and advocating for the Little Rock 9.
The workforce’s particular version logos have been designed by Little Rock-based agency Eric Rob & Isaac, guaranteeing that this tribute stays deeply rooted within the metropolis’s historical past.
By honoring the braveness and perseverance of the Little Rock 9, the Arkansas Vacationers are ensuring that their legacy of resilience, justice, and equality continues to be remembered—not simply in historical past books, however on the baseball discipline as effectively.